ManicDDaily

Thirteen Ways of Remembering Red Baby Shoes

I.
His head was a sunny hill that knelt before her
and also (though he was the emperor of children’s footwear)
before the beautiful red shoes.

II.
Garnets hold no lights
nor darknesses
compared to the deep
red shoes.

III.
Her feet were little clumps of dough
made human by
red shoes.

IV.
The red shoes stared up
at the world; the world
could not stop
looking back.

V.
There are red shoes with sharp
heels; there are red shoes cut
on a bias like one
lipsticked lip; there are shoes
that movies are made of, that spin
ruby-starred dreams.

Such shoes are perfectly valid; they too
mark their rosy rhythms
on the street.

But these are not the red shoes
of which I speak.

VI.
The voice of even small red shoes
cannot be silenced.

VII.
The pulse in a young child’s thumbs,
fingertips, fits one moment into the next
like the stitching
of first ever shoes, threaded red. 

VIII.
Some joke that big shoes mean
a good understanding,

But to understand little shoes that are the dark red of even
the unbitter heart, the wearer must bend
to their very soles.

IX.
What steer gave its life
for the red shoes? What bull, what sweet-eyed
long-lashed cow?  their tongues as tuneful as any offered
to Ulysses’s gods–

The aiglets of the red shoes
are as dark with sorrow
as sorrow.
The laces try to tie off those vacuums
in a weave
of ox blood.

X.
How is the heart so heavy
when somewhere walk
red shoes?

XI.
The red shoes were not cherry red, which is not the red
of cherries, meaning that the red shoes
were cherry; the rest of the world
their stone.

The red shoes seemed to
understand this, or maybe they just
didn’t worry about it.

XII.
Oh red shoes even tied tight
you were as soft as a hand crossing the street,
as firm as a hand
crossing.  

XIII.
In the whole of life,
there was only one pair
of red shoes.
Somewhere a sunny hill still kneels before them
one or both knees bent.

****************************

Another drafty poem with my drafty drawing, my 12th for this April 2016 National Poetry Month.  This one was written for Grace’s wonderful prompt on With Real Toads to write something inspired by Wallace Stevens.  Some of the Stevens’ poems that I thought of writing this was “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” and, of course, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”  Again so sorry for the length.   Thanks for your patience!

PS have edited slightly since first posting.